and another group, such as the Muʿtazilah, bases both doctrinal and practical principles on them. Indeed, this latter group takes what is common to the actions of Allah and His servants as its standard: whatever is good when done by Allah is good when done by a servant, and whatever is bad when done by a servant is bad when done by Allah. For this reason, people have called them those who liken divine actions to human actions.

There is no doubt that these are the speculative theologians censured by the early generations, because they so extensively base religion on the unsound reasoning of speculative theology and reject what the Quran and Sunnah have brought. Since the others share some of these tendencies, they incur censure and reproach in proportion to their agreement with them. They agree with them in many of the arguments by which they claim to establish the foundations of religion and faith, and in some of their positions that contradict the Sunnah, transmitted reports, and what is upheld by people of reason and religion.

The purpose here is not to give a detailed account of their positions, for we have written about them elsewhere. Rather, the point here is that the Quran presents the most perfect approach to the foundations of religion and its subsidiary matters, both in its proofs and in the questions it addresses.

The speculative theologian supposes that his own distinctive method accords with the Quran’s method—whether in establishing lordship, divine oneness, prophethood, or resurrection. Yet he is mistaken in much, or most, of this, as in the present instance. There are several respects in which the speculative theologian has erred in assuming that the Quran’s method accords with his own.